


Everything Goes!

by AngelOfDeath10



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 09:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21051953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfDeath10/pseuds/AngelOfDeath10
Summary: Another man in Maka's life has messed up and Soul readies himself as equal parts accomplice and whipping boy to see her through again. Maybe it's time Maka figured some glaringly obvious things out, but she is very busy ruining her ex's financial future. Ridiculousness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't have any ownership of the Soul Eater characters or of the brilliance that is Hit Em Up Style.
> 
> Originally written in 2016/2018.

Soul saw the cascade of socks followed by a similar rain of what looked like designer briefs as he was able to ascertain first hand when some Hugo Boss landed square on top of his carefully gelled and artful bedhead.

A distinctive shirt was fluttering down like a bad art house film and the purple paisley was familiar enough that he quickened his pace to Maka's apartment. Ominous feelings magnified as his ears perked to a cacophony he could name.

The sound of happy hardcore was booming so loudly that her doorknob was vibrating. The key that Maka had made for him that time she had gone on vacation and he had watched her cat (prior to Hiro and his "allergies" at which time Soul had been gifted a very pretty black cat named Blair until Maka could think of how to bring her home again) jangled in Soul's pocket.

The neighbor in the condo across the way opened their door and Soul sucked in a breath, always hating encountering the steely bespecled woman. Just his luck she wasn't on a business trip, like normal.

"I respect you, Mr. Evans, so I trust you will get Ms. Albarn to arrest that horrifying music prior to my informing the authorities." It was an empty threat. Maka's dad and his friends were the cops in this part of the city, and it was unlikely a call to them would result in much more than Spirit Albarn begging Maka to be a good girl.

"I'll take care of it," and because they woman had a glint in her eye that made him gulp, he added "Ma'am."

"Soon." She added for emphasis before shutting her door firmly.

Soul took a shaky breath, wondering what new hell he was entering as he opened the door and was assaulted by a dance mix so aggressive that you'd have to be on speed to be able to keep up. Chirpy voices and booming beats were only vaguely muffled as he stuck his fingers in his ears. The noise cancelling headphones he loved were at home on his desk next to his laptop and he wished he could open a portal to a dimension that would allow him to pluck them from the air. Or if he could somehow morph into something without ears.

The beat made him feel like he had two heartbeats, one of which was in cardiac arrest. Only time would tell which one it was.

Maka was at the center of the midday weekend rave, systematically pouring expensive looking colognes into one big mop bucket. The smell from the concoction was almost as repulsive as the music.

"Maka!" Soul yelled, but she seemed perfectly content to twist off another cologne cap and add it to the bucket. "Maka!"

She still couldn't hear him, it seemed. He didn't want to wait for a lull in the music, so he moved to tap her on the shoulder. Rookie mistake.

Faster than he could even process it, he was on his back with his head cracking sharply against the hardwood Maka had insisted were one of the most charming things about this apartment when Soul had toured it with her and Tsubaki two years ago. Simpler times.

This was just like those dreams he had but would die before he admitted to: Maka straddling him half dressed and face flushed with color, hair wild, but the part where her forearm was sharply pressed against his windpipe had not featured prior to today. He was seeing stars and things were starting to go black and red when he saw her face register his identity and her mouth may have formed his name. Soul couldn't tell anything over the music.

All at once, the music ceased and the silence wooshed in on him, which meant that those whining noises periodically happening were coming from him. He needed to man up before Maka got back, even if he wondered if he needed to be checked for a concussion. Clearly the pulsing pain meant she had dislodged a clot somewhere and he was about to seize up and die.

"You're not going to die," Maka's amused voice and smiling face peeking over down on him brought him back to the present moment. She helped him sit up and handed him a bundle of ice in a dishtowel. "Soul. So you got my text."

"Yeah." If the single all caps sentence _ALL MEN ARE PIGS_ hadn't been an invitation to come over, he was getting rusty at reading his best friend's intentions.

Feet bare and legs shown to best effect in the shortest of green athletic shorts, Soul wondered if it made him a bad friend that last night in his unconscious mind those legs had been wrapped around him. He hadn't asked for the dreams, they were just a weekly or so feature since he was about fourteen. He took it as a sign that he was brain damaged. Maka was his friend and that's all she had ever been and ever would be, he had convinced himself of that.

Clearly the brain trauma was causing his free association to be much worse than usual. He put the ice gingerly against this back of his head and watched Maka wander over and fasten her hair in the pigtails he hadn't seen her wear since, well, Hiro had told her he liked her hair better long and down her back. Soul didn't care what Maka did with her hair, but all signs were pointing to perhaps Hiro not being in the picture any longer.

"Look at this." Maka shoved her phone in Soul's face and his eyes bugged out of his head. She was crouching over his extended legs as he sat on her floor propped up by one hand, so she knew all he could do was gaze helplessly forward at the screen mere inches from his face.

"For death's sake, Maka, give me a fucking warning before you shove a dick pic in my face!" She dropped the phone in his lap, and it bounced against his sac painfully. He wondered if she had dropped it there on purpose, but she had already stood up and wandered over to the bucket of cologne.

Graceful, as per usual, she didn't spill a drop as she quickly moved out of the room. "Let me flush this real fast. Just scroll to the text part."

Soul had a sick feeling in his stomach both from the sext, and because he had a sinking suspicion that what followed it was another nail in the coffin of Maka's ever tenuous faith in the male half of the species.

"Hey my sweet goddess Kimmy I can't wait to run my tongue down your… gross. Man… he's an idiot…" Soul hated being the cleanup crew for Maka's breakdowns now that they were adults and he couldn't just go beat up whatever bugged her.

Normally no one got close enough to Maka that they even had a ghost of a chance. With her model body and cute face there were enough men who wanted a try, but a five minute conversation where she tore apart their assumptions and danced circles around them with her academic accomplishments and Olympic level decathelon training usually left them too petrified. Hiro had been some combination of totally oblivious and totally devoted that he had seemed harmless, even good for her.

Soul had hated his guts from minute one.

Watching Maka change for a guy, any guy, even in little ways had made him feel like there would never be any constant in his life. Maka was his rock. She was the one that was there when he needed a stabilizing phone conversation at 2 a.m. when the panic attacks felt so real and nothing seemed like it would ever be normal again. Maka was the backseat driver when they took his motorcycle on winding mountainside roads. Maka was the one with the plan, the boss.

And right now Maka's plan seemed to include taking that empty, but clearly not rinsed out bucket that had contained all Hiro's cologne and to fill it up with his personal items in the room. She was picking up trinkets and tossing them in as she went, throwing them with enough force he was sure some of them broke. He waited for her to talk, watching her take a calming breath before seeking out Soul's hooded gaze. The ice was helping a little, and he wished her problem had as easy a solution as time and a cold compress.

"I don't know why I thought he would be any different than my father. He's a philandering pig, and a moron." She set the bucket down and flopped on her bed. "Scratch that. He's a philandering pig and I'm the moron."

"Maka…" He had only seen something play out like this once before, and it wasn't nearly this bad. For one thing they had been like fifteen, and it was over the black eye she had given their now friend Blake for trying to ask Maka out to get to her friend Tsubaki. She had seen right through that, and the one day suspension for fighting had been the best day watching movies they had ever had together. All the slasher films had been super cathartic.

"Don't say it Soul. I know how this goes. You try to tell me I shouldn't feel so bad. And then I tell you how I should have put together the signs ages ago because didn't I grow up surrounded by the signs? And then you tell me that it's different when it's the person you're dating. And then I tell you that's no excuse for being conned by yet another filthy, lying, scheming…" Not even sitting up or looking at it, Maka gave the bucket a curving kick that sent it flying into a wall, scattering all the male jewelry in various directions.

Soul stood up slowly, feeling a little dizzy for lots of reasons, but mostly from concern for the only person in the world he knew he would gladly take a bullet for if it ever came to that. He wished he could shift her pain to his own screwed up mind, which was so full of anxiety that a little of hers probably wouldn't make a dent in his madness.

Sitting down on the bed, he saw how her shirt had ridden up so far he could see a peek of her orange sports bra. She often jogged in that bra, or so he knew when he agreed to be dragged to the gym for his own good every blue moon, but he still focused very carefully on her eyes and forehead.

"This isn't your fault. Stop acting like it's your fault."

"But I should have—"

"Nope." Soul smiled down at her, and he was relieved to see her smile back and close her eyes to take another calming breath.

They sat there, enjoying the late spring breeze through the window that was clearing out the cologne stench and Soul felt the tug in his heart again. He wanted so badly to gather her up in his arms and let her know there was one person in the world that had her back come hell or high water. Friends first, they were a team. But the instinct to protect was too tightly wound these days with the emotions that had never shifted an iota from the day he realized he loved her in high school. What a shitty gym class that had been for multiple reasons.

When her hand tangled with his he didn't even look down and just savored the moment. Maka needed him and he was here. Best to just stick to the basics today lest his heart grow two sizes larger in poisonous hope.

"I bought some moving boxes. Can you go pick up all the clothes I threw out the window? They should be ready now."

Soul was confused only for a moment. "Ready?"

"It just rained a bit ago, after all." She darted up and pulled on some boots. They clashed horribly with her t-shirt and athletic shorts, but she didn't seem to care about anything right now. "I'm going to gather up all the kitchen appliances while you do that and then we can head to the pawn shop, ok?"

Clearing his throat, Soul felt like he was watching what a manic episode looked like. "Are you sure that you want to be doing this?"

Maka wandered around the room and picked up the items that had once been in the bucket, one by one, and plopped them in more gently this time around. Sniffing one, she made a face and let it fall in just the same. "Absolutely positive. I already sorted out all the jewelry I'm taking there, too."

Peeking over at Maka's dresser he saw with a flutter of satisfaction that the silver and onyx ring he had bought he as a joke during her goth phase (strictly speaking it was their goth phase, but if she was the boss she could take the credit for their failures as well as their successes) was still lying in plain sight. There were some other items he recognized as having been given to her by her mother, but Maka wasn't really big on the whole jewelry thing. Her hobbies didn't really allow for wearing it often.

"Most of what he has is clothes, so once I box up those, and all his stupid toiletries, then all that's left is to list the TV on an auction site or something… and then put out an ad for a roommate."

"You can't do that!" The words flew out of his mouth, head pain forgotten as he scrambled to his feet from the bed.

Maka was already moving toward the kitchen. "I know you love that TV, Soul, but I'll be able to afford one on my own eventually. Movie night will just have to be at your place for a month or two, tops."

Soul abandoned his spot on Maka's bed and followed her into the kitchen where she was grabbing all the attachments to a food processor out of a cupboard and putting them on the counter.

"You can't just live with some stranger, Maka."

She was assembling for the food processor so it would travel more easily as she answered his concern lightly. "It's just my name on the lease, and I thank everything for that, but I can't afford this place on my own since they cut back my hours at the library. Once all Hiro's clothes are out of here I can take that room I filled with books and other storage and move it all into my bedroom. I'll have lots of room once I get a smaller mattress anyway. Now go grab the stuff out in the street, I'll be done in here pretty soon and come get you." Her voice was deceptively cheerful.

Woodenly, Soul marched into the living room and grabbed an empty box. As he tried to think of a way to derail the runaway train that was Maka's new life plans, he imagined all sorts of terrible circumstances while in the elevator going down:

_Maka living with some secret serial killer, who would then chop her up into little pieces while she slept._

_Maka taking in some party girl who would sweep her up into clubbing all the time, turning her brain to mush in the process._

_Maka not finding anyone and moving back in with her father, only to go to jail for patricide._

It took about twenty minutes, but Soul was reasonably certain he had found all the socks and underwear (the purple paisley shirt was nowhere to be found) when he spotted Hiro in the distance. The guy had the gall to come back after… oh shit he was smiling and waving. Maybe he didn't even know he had sent his dick pick to the wrong person!

"Hey Soul, what's with all the clothes? Going to donate them somewhere? I might have a thing or two to toss in there." Hiro was wearing all that super colorful designer clothing he liked, but Soul just wanted to punch him in his stupid ascot. That impulse was nothing new, regardless of the circumstances.

It would only be fair to try to avoid having to bail Maka out for assault, if at all possible. "I wouldn't go up there right now, if I were you."

Hiro looked confused, but to be fair he often was confused. Soul had been resisting the urge to kick his ass for eight months now, for walking through life in a confident haze while Maka organized everything around him. Having been the recipient of Maka's perfectionism, he knew what a comfortable existence it was, so this would probably be a shock.

"Check your phone, dude. What's the last thing you texted Maka?" It was all the clue he was going to give him, and much more warning than this waste of humanity deserved for the pain and fallout in Maka's life.

Hiro pulled out his phone and scrolled through it casually, then went chalk white and very still. He made eye contact with Soul, and then locked on to his phone again. The sweat that formed on his brow looked cold, and Soul had zero pity for the situation he had created for himself. Shifting the weight of the box of clothes, Soul shoved them at the blond man, who dropped his phone on the sidewalk with a crack as he instinctively grabbed it.

"Here's what you're going to do." Soul felt like he was channeling something inside of himself that was evilly powerful, a dark voice that hypnotized him as well as Hiro as he spoke. "You're going to take that box and you're going to back to your side piece and hide out for a while. Coming back here, for any reason, while Maka is also present is a mistake and I'll tell you why: if she doesn't kill you I just might to save her the trouble. See, Maka's trained for maximum efficiency and minimal pain when taking someone down, but I'm not like that when I fight and I would make sure you suffered. You'd feel every broken bone, every rupturing organ…"

Hiro opened his mouth to say something but Soul cut him off.

"Go. Now." He cracked his knuckles for emphasis.

***

"Are you ok?" Soul ran his fingers over the candle flame over and over until Maka gave his wrist a wringing slap to make him stop. "Dammit Maka, that hurt way more than the fire…"

"I'm not ok. I thought the fully loaded potato was a great idea, but I ate the whole steak too and I think I'm going to puke."

Since this day wanted to make a mockery of all of Soul's secret dreams, they were here at the most expensive restaurant in town in a private booth in the corner and eating a luxurious dinner by candlelight but there were some differences to Soul's fantasy. For one thing, in his version of it in his mind they would be dressed to the nines but here they were in the same clothes Maka had dragged them to the pawn shop in: Soul with his t-shirt and jeans, and her in her casual athletic gear and buckled leather boots. Instead of looking deep into his eyes and saying something sappy, she was instead slumped on her side of the booth looking a little green from having eaten too much.

Soul had successfully eaten his feelings along with his weight in crab meat, but then Maka had said order the most expensive thing he wanted. The whole evening was on her (or rather, on the proceeds from her food processor, mixer, immersion blender, juicer…)

Staring at her silently while giving his best resting bitch face, which he figured was his version of puppy dog eyes, Maka finally caved in. "I'm ok, really. Looking at me like that isn't going to change anything."

"You were throwing clothes out of a third story window just a couple hours ago."

Wincing, Maka sat up straight and he could hear her bare flesh peel off of the vinyl seat cover as she tried to face Soul properly. "Theatrics aside,"

"Which are ongoing—"

"_Theatrics aside,_" she emphasized, "While I'll fully admit I'm raging over yet another infidelity that I had to be unfortunately associated with in any way, and that I take joy in every punishment I mete out to avenge, I'm not actually upset that Hiro and I aren't a thing anymore."

There was a lull in which water glasses got refilled and dessert got ordered. Neither of them were hungry for it, but if they were going to do this spend all the money hand over fist thing then they needed the literal cherry on the sundae to round it out. Once alone, Maka finally continued her thought, as if the current had pulled it under but then forced it to resurface. Soul knew if he was silent long enough, it was bound to happen.

"I was angry at first, and I'm angry now, but I'm not sad. I feel like I'm supposed to feel sad, and the fact that I didn't made me feel a little sad." Irritated that they were talking about feelings, as Maka didn't like being very reflective as a rule, she turned on Soul. "Do you want me to be sad? Would that make this more normal for you?"

Maka was queen of compartmentalization, but she wasn't dishonest about her feelings. Not with him, anyway, not since her parent's divorce and the two-year train wreck he had been witness to that was a tween Maka Albarn. Come to think of it, that had coincided with their goth phase.

Soul shrugged. "Whatever you feel is your own business, I'm just here if you want to talk about it."

"No offense, Soul, but I'll probably call up Tsubaki in like an hour and just dump on Hiro while she nods and smiles remotely. You don't want to hear the things I'm going to complain about. It's at least 30% about how lame he was in bed."

"Now _I'm_ going to puke." Soul sighed, and as the two servings of limited batch house made ice cream arrived he tried to remind himself that not punching Hiro on the street when he'd had the chance was a good thing.

Soul was making his way through his spicy dark chocolate cinnamon scoop morosely when Maka piped up. "You're the only person I called, you know."

"I know." His tone was bored, but they both knew he was smiling and he couldn't stop the muscles from continuing to give away his pleasure. Traitorous body. "So I was thinking, since you need someone to move in on short notice… what about me?"

Maka was twirling her spoon down into her strawberry vinaigrette, boring a hole to the bottom of the bowl instead of eating it. "Ha ha. I'm not some charity case. You can't throw money at me just because you're worried."

Always with her damn pride. He didn't just throw money at things, did he? Shit, he was getting off track already. Focus, Evans. "I mentioned a few months ago that ever since I quit grad school I didn't have much of a purpose, and I hate living at home again. You'd be doing me a favor."

There were long agonizing moments as Soul wondered if she'd allow that flimsy explanation to pass through her wall of pride. She didn't want to be supported by any man, ever, even her best friend in a time of need. However, it was true that Soul hated living in his parent's townhouse. They might have been physically at their palatial home in the countryside doing whatever rich musicians did with their days, but he was surrounded by reminders of his wildly successful family at every turn and had taken to living in the basement to get away from it all. Getting out of that situation would actually be a huge plus.

"There would need to be some ground rules." That was Maka-speak for yes! Soul tried to play it cool.

"Yeah, like what? You don't get to make all the demands if I'm going to pay half the rent."

"Bathroom times will be scheduled." She took a bite of her ice cream, grimaced, then pushed it aside. "I know how long you take doing everything and I refuse to be late for work because your late night somehow became an early morning and you felt like a bath."

Soul bristled. "Then TV time will be on a first come first served basis, barring special programming. You don't get to make me stop watching before I'm finished with my show."

"I'm not doing your dishes."

"I won't touch your laundry."

"Ok, then." Maka blinked suddenly, as if realizing all at once what she'd agreed to.

Soul polished off his ice cream and pulled Maka's half melted scoop over to work on that too. Maka was blushing, but for once he wasn't sure why. She didn't seem angry, but neither did she seem relieved. Maybe this was a mistake.

"Look, if you don't feel comfortable with living with me—"

Maka's smile snapped onto her face at once. "No! No. This will be great. It'll be like when we go camping only with indoor plumbing. Why did we ever stop doing that anyway?"

_I only owned one tent_, Soul thought, _and we're a lot bigger than we used to be when we had sleepovers in the backyard._ "Dunno." His shrug spoke volumes while saying nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Soul had no concept about how to move. Maka would probably never forget his grand entrance as he waltzed in (first of the month, which just so happened to be a Friday) at six in the evening. He had precisely one backpack and two duffle bags of stuff, and the backpack shouldn't even count because largely it just contained his expensive laptop and cords to hook it up to the speaker system he had brought in one of the duffles. While moderately relieved he had stuffed toiletries and a couple days worth of clothes in the second large bag, she had some probing questions for him. Before anything could escape her mouth, Soul dug a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and stuck it in her face.

"Here's the check for my half of the rent!" He handed it to her and began to walk to the room that had previously been her study until last weekend when she had hauled book pile after book pile into her bedroom. "Want to get a pizza for dinner?"

"I guess if we order something to be delivered we'll have more time to move your furniture…" Maka stood in the doorway, hands on hips, while she watched Soul pace around the room. It was so empty there was an echo to her words.

"I figured I'd buy an air mattress or something tomorrow and then just wing it until…" Having darted into the living room and back to the empty space, the smack Maka delivered to her best friend's head with a magazine on nutrition and fitness she had snatched from her coffee table hurt every bit as much as she meant it to. "OW! What was that for?!"

Brandishing the makeshift club of glossy ads and articles, Maka poked him in the chest as he gave her a dark look. "I'll put my extra sheets on the couch tonight and tomorrow you will go out and buy a real bed for a real boy. In case you forgot, once you're done moving we are taking a cab and picking up Blair at your parents' place. If you get an air mattress I guarantee it will be popped in less than a day."

Soul had been looking mutinous until Maka mentioned the cat, changing from stormy to chagrined. He's been living like a hermit crab for too much of his adult life: college dorm to college dorm to Evans' townhouse and now Maka's apartment.

Their apartment, she amended in her mind. There the thought stuck, like a splinter.

"Did you ever buy a toaster again?" Soul was making a big show of rubbing at his head where she had smacked him, obviously trying to dig up some pity points.

"What does that matter? You didn't bring any food, Soul. You barely brought the necessities of life."

"I have two boxes of toaster pastries in there somewhere. The generic kind I like and you won't touch."

Maka grimaced. "It's all chemicals and sugar. There's nothing in there to sustain a human body."

"If that were true I'd be dead already." Soul was unpacking his computer when something seemed to occur to him. "I probably need a desk and a chair, don't I?"

Should Maka's eyes have rolled any harder they would have disappeared entirely into her sockets. "Yeah, maybe."

Bed, dresser, desk, chair, some sort of lamp… it was looking like her weekend was either going to be spent emptying a room in the Evans' basement item by item or shopping. What she had planned to do was work out, but maybe if she moved enough furniture it would kind of count.

Soul's crooked grin caught her eye, forcing Maka out of her funk to give a shadow of a smile back. His next words popped her right back into irritation, though. "First order of business is to buy a TV."

"Your priorities always astound me." Sighing, she let her shoulders slump in momentary defeat against his ignorance of what it took to live outside of a bubble. "I'll order a pizza and we can make a list of the things you need to buy tomorrow."

"Maka?" Soul, sitting crossed legged on a bare but very clean floor and pulling laptop cords out of a bag, looked up at her with eyes trying to seem aloof but oozing concern despite himself. "This is ok right? You know. Me, here."

Her heart had been solid diamond since Hiro had been given the boot and crawled his lizard brain run body into someone else's life. The 1.5 weeks between Hiro ghosting himself from the sticky situation he had created to Soul taking over her book room had been rough. Between her father attempting to coddle her in some suffocating parody of parental love and her girlfriends sending her books and songs encouraging her own empowerment, she just wanted to put a moratorium on attention towards her apparent 'fragility'.

So a relationship hadn't worked out. Most of them didn't, and she had been fooling herself that she was special or that Hiro had been different. Gravity, displacement, cheating men—forces of nature, clearly. Being mad at nature was pointless.

Staring into Soul's too casual to actually be casual act, she wondered why when she found herself nursing a burning anger towards the entire male half of the species she couldn't imagine him as one of them. He'd probably be offended. Soul wasn't a _guy_, he was just Soul.

"It's great, don't worry about it. It'll be like old times, only now after we watch movies I don't have to worry about you driving your motorcycle home late with all the drunks and crazy people on the road."

Snorting, reassured, Soul turned his attention to assembling the complex array of speakers and computer equipment he couldn't live without.

***

Maka had an inkling that something was different in their dynamic when she accidentally bumped into him the next morning while he was wandering out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth and an open button up Hawaiian shirt with pineapples all over it.

The circles under his eyes told her the sleep on the couch had not been good, and the way he flinched when he saw her told Maka volumes about how much he was looking forward to a day of shopping and moving _(not at all)_.

It was the puckered pink scar from a childhood accident she well remembered that first drew her eyes to his bare torso, but it was the surprising presence of abs that kept them there about four overly fast heartbeats too long.

"Take a picture, sheesh." Soul's mouth was full of toothbrush and foam, but he began to button up with a grumble.

Not sure what just happened, Maka hid behind an objective statement, "Your scar is getting faint. I can hardly see it anymore."

"I guess," Soul grunted, and as he buttoned the last button he crashed onto the creaky old couch to then sleepily brush his teeth a little more. "Your couch is a holy nightmare, you know."

"It was either that or the floor." Or her bed, but that hadn't been something she had even considered last night. So why she was thinking of it now...

Soul rummaged around in the duffle next to the couch that held his clothes and pulled out a canister of hair product triumphantly. Marching back to the bathroom and waving the can of product in Maka's face as he passed, he shut the door firmly in her face.

"Don't take all day doing your hair, we have to get things done and no one cares if your bedhead is real or not!"

"Quit complaining, I'll be out soon!"

Maka smiled to herself, heading to the kitchen to whip up a quick scramble before they raided his basement haven at the townhouse. Since he had made absolutely no preparation, and Soul only owned a motorcycle, they had had to leave a voicemail for Black Star about the use of his truck. Unfortunately, with the way Black Star loved his truck, it also meant using him as well. That would undoubtedly work out in Soul's favor as Star and Maka competed with who could carry the most heavy things on their own, completely relieving him of doing just about anything.

Darkly, Maka wondered if Soul had engineered this. If so, there was a devilish cleverness to it. The bell pepper she was chopping bore the brunt of her speculation and she nearly minced it before she noticed what she was doing.

Hair a little too closely akin to the pineapples on his shirt, Maka had to cough over her barked laugh while Soul wandered into the kitchen. Maka dumped two portions of scramble unceremoniously onto plates, and poured two glasses of milk.

"Yuck. You hate drinking milk, so do I." Wandering over to the drawer Maka kept the silverware in, Soul pulled out two forks and grabbed paper towels while Maka rinsed out the pan quickly.

She wondered at how seamless it all was, somehow, suddenly. Alarmingly. "Doesn't matter. It's important if I'm getting a workout today stealing stuff—"

"—borrowing—"

"_Permanently borrowing without permission_ from your parents."

Soul sat down and, surprisingly, fell into the manners his parents had ground into his young and impressionable mind. Napkin on his knee, just the right amount of egg perched on his fork, the only sign of rebellion from his upper crust upbringing were his slumped posture and the left hand tapping an absent rhythm on the table top.

"What's with the goofy shirt today, anyway?" Maka tried not to keep looking up at his hair and then down at the shirt meaningfully. Her rogue smile was easily covered with a sip of milk. Yuck was right, never her favorite way to start the day but she would need to protein.

"A gift from Wes last tropical venue he played at. He said he thought of me immediately because I'm 'just as prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside.' Asshole."

Maka thought she knew where this was going. "So you're wearing it today hoping you'll ruin it?"

"You know Black Star is a walking disaster. Something will happen."

"It looks like silk." Maka didn't even think about it, she just reached over and petted his arm. The shirt slid along her fingers, as decadent as she suspected, but then she quickly ran out of shirt sleeve and inadvertently stroked the skin of his arm down to his elbow. Soul's skin was nearly as soft as the shirt, but she could feel wiry muscle flex as he twitched. A shiver ran down her back. "Feels expensive, you sure Wes won't get mad?"

"I guarantee whatever he paid for it is a drop in the bucket compared to what he spent in liquor that same night alone. I swear he performs as close to the equator as he can just so he can drink and sleep with tourists." Soul glanced over at the clock on the wall, its background what Maka had once referred to as a 'cute skull motif', and swore. "Shit, we have to get there before Black Star or else he might trip the silent alarm again."

They sped up the pace and Maka darted in to the bathroom to brush her teeth and tie her hair in a ponytail behind her before equally quickly zipping into her room and pulling on shorts, a t-shirt, and a jacket. The jacket was for the ride over to his parent's place, because she was sure she'd be too hot from moving things to need it after that.

As she approached, Soul handed Maka the helmet she always kept in the closet next to the door. Technically it was his, since he bought it, but he had always left it here for when she rode with him. More 'cute skull motif' covered its shiny surface—one of their inside jokes it was impossible to mention to others without getting that weird look that was usually followed with some sideways question about if they were dating or not. People just didn't get it.

"You look like you're ready for a track meet."

"Hell if I'm letting Black Star carry all the heavy stuff. Lemme grab my gloves and we can go."

Soul scoffed. "Gloves?"

"Trust me, I've helped Liz and Patty move like every year for the past five. Having gloves makes a world of difference between ripping open your hands or moving that damn dresser than Liz swears is an antique."

"Whatever," Soul tapped a foot while Maka dug in the top of the closet, but she swore when she whipped around in triumph Soul's eyes flicked up to the ceiling while his cheeks took on a pink tinge. Suspicion crossed her mind for only a moment as he stomped past her and through the front door. "C'mon geek, last time Black Star almost punched the rent a cop that showed up…"

***

"That place smells like chili farts and B.O." Black Star marched into Soul's basement lair and craned his neck around to scan for dork ammo, or so Maka assumed. He was destined for disappointment, because so far as Maka knew most of Soul's childhood had either been donated to charity or placed in storage. Nothing in the basement space screamed home, but then neither did much of the townhouse as a whole. It was all pristine white carpets, tasteful modern art, and that bone deep chill of a space that isn't heated regularly due to lack of occupancy.

"It's colder down here than it was outside." Maka rubbed her hands over her arms and contemplated darting upstairs to get her jacket. She had left it and a towel on the floor of the upstairs bathroom where they had temporarily locked Blair with her litter box and food.

"C'mon children of the corn, get your skinny ass down here!" Black Star was a font of charm.

"That's not even the right reference!" Soul called from up the stairs. He was rubbing a scratch Blair had given him when he had dragged her out from under her nest under the bed. "You mean village of the damned."

But Black Star wasn't listening, he was already heaving the mattress off the bed, sheets and all. "Wasting daylight, princess. The faster we move this shit, the faster you feed me all the burgers I can eat." Pillows flew across the room as Black Star kicked at them and continued to struggle with the floppy queen size memory foam.

"In fifteen minutes. I said all the burgers you can eat in fifteen minutes." Soul clarified. Maka wondered if he knew phrasing like that was only issuing their meathead gym rat friend another challenge.

"Noice!" Star called over his shoulder as he disappeared through the doorway.

Maka and Soul made eye contact, silently communicating the shared understanding that while he was a bonehead and immature, he was still theirs. Well, kind of, mostly Tsubaki's immature bonehead.

"How's the arm? Blair was not happy with you."

Soul laughed, and pressed a hand against the thin oozing cut on his forearm. "I'm an expert at being disappointing."

It was one of those self-deprecating jokes that Maka hated hearing him make because she knew he sort of meant it. "Take that back."

"You gonna make me?" Soul put his hands in his pockets and gave her that hooded look she felt like she had memorized sometime in high school. It was the posture he took when he was retreating, and she wondered what had brought on his dark mood this time.

"I might." Best thing to do was stay busy. Maka pointed at the bed frame. "Take that apart so Star doesn't try to get the whole thing out the door at once. I'll start unpacking the dresser."

She took two strides over and slid the first drawer open only to feel a jolt of awareness when long fingers covered her hands and forced her to close the drawer quickly. Soul was pressed against her back, his chin almost hooking over her right shoulder. Maka felt like she had been punched, her breathing halting suddenly.

"How about I unpack the dresser?" Soul gave a nervous laugh and it brushed the skin of her neck. With deep shock Maka realized she wanted to arch back into him. Had some evil spirit possessed her last night without her knowledge? That might explain it.

Darting down out of the pseudo embrace before insanity claimed her entirely, Maka crossed her arms over her chest. "I've seen your stupid underwear before."

"I'll go get a trash bag upstairs and dump all the clothes in there." It was like she hadn't spoken. Soul ran his hands through his hair, seemingly forgetting how long it took him to style it just so and then beat a hasty retreat to the upstairs kitchen. He didn't look at her once.

Maka was left alone in the cold and partially ransacked basement while she searched her heart for reasons why it was beating like she had just finished a long run. "This can't be happening…"

But if anyone had been there to ask what she meant, she would have been hard pressed to give a coherent answer.

***

Maka, who felt like she had eaten enough fast food to cough up a vat of grease, sucked at her small strawberry shake. "I think he just has Tsubaki stick him in a sauna suit until he sweats it all out. Along with half his brain cells."

"Tsu will help me sweat it out all right." Star said, spraying burger bits at them while trying to also make some obscene hand gesture. He waggled his eyebrows for emphasis.

How Black Star had somehow hooked up with the daughter of his jiujitsu teacher was a source of constant bemusement to Maka. Tsubaki was the yin to his yang, she supposed. And for all his bluster, no one was more honest, loyal, or straightforward than Black Star. There was probably a certain kind of appeal to that. Plus, if he got out of line Tsubaki was more than capable of tying Star into a human pretzel.

"Oh very nice, how about I text her that you said that?" Maka rolled her eyes.

"How about I text her that I said that. I bet she'll think it's a great idea. More useful than that garbage hot yoga or whatever she was yammering about the other day." Black Star put down his burger to pull out his phone from his pocket. It had a neon orange safety case but somehow also had multiple cracks across the screen. With greasy fingers, he engrossed himself in propositioning his girlfriend.

Soul snorted, then pushed his burger away from him across the grey linoleum restaurant table towards Maka. "Want a bite? If not I'll just toss it."

Maka stared at the burger like Soul had passed her something diseased. Was this some kind of test of their friendship? Had he realized the terrible confusing feelings blossoming in her all day? Was she making a big deal out of nothing? Oh no, he was staring at her funny. She must be acting weird. He just wanted to know if she wanted a bite of burger. What did she think he was asking?

"Uh—" Maka tried to find words, but was saved when Black Star interjected loudly over her.

"Yes!" Whatever Tsubaki had replied to Black Star's text must have been favorable because his forward fist pump knocked over his gigantic soda which promptly popped its top and covered Soul's lap, most of the tabletop, and the surrounding floor. Like a good friend, Black Star promptly started laughing and pointing at Soul.

Maka sprang to action. "I'll go get napkins, hold on."

While talking with the teen at the register, asking for a couple handfuls of napkins and warning them they'd have to mop the floor, she saw something curious across the room. Soul and Star were talking when something Star said casually caused Soul to get very grim and stand up fast enough from his chair that it clattered behind him on its side. With a tense posture and murder in Soul's eyes, Maka wondered what it was that Black Star had said to upset him but knew she was never going to get an answer when both boys were cooly and pointedly not making eye contact or talking when she arrived back with the napkins.

"Let's go Maka." Soul said tightly.

"But the soda…"

"I have pants at the apartment, I'll be fine for the drive over." Soul eyed Black Star furiously while Star casually checked his phone and gave them a peace sign.

"I'll give Tsu a call then head over with all your garbage and your cat." With three more burgers to eat he was in no rush to go anywhere. "Keep it real, bro."

Soul said nothing as they marched out, but as Maka climbed on his bike she wondered what the hell was going on with the day. She was losing her mind, and her oldest and closest friends seemed to be losing theirs as well. Maybe something was in the air. Or a secret government experiment had put an insanity creating agent in the drinking water.

If that were true, though, Black Star probably wouldn't have been effected since he lived off of pre-workout and sports drinks.

"Let's go home, Soul." Maka said into his ear behind him as he started up the bike. She wasn't sure if it was the vibration of the motor, but she could have sworn she felt him shudder.


	3. Chapter 3

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Fucking hell, Maka!" Soul, drinking directly from the orange juice container, knew he was busted and dribbled onto the floor in shock.

How Maka had ninja-ed her way behind him when she would have had to make her way across the nightingale floor hallways blew his mind a little. Even Blair made the floorboards creak when she did her nightly cat laps around the apartment to burn off energy.

Her pastel yellow robe wasn't tied tightly and there was a thin stripe of flesh where her tank top and pajama shorts didn't meet. Soul sighed at his brain for taking the time to notice that fun little detail. He'd been trying to be better at thinking of Maka platonically ever since Black Star had called him out over 'being a puss' over burgers, but it was like everything about their living situation was attempting to derail that goal.

"While you're in there you might as well grab the jam for me."

By some miracle she was neither berating him for drinking from the container nor smacking him for said infraction. It made the hair stand up on the back on his neck thinking that Maka was probably plotting something much worse.

"You're eating carbs after 9pm on a weeknight." Soul said flatly as Maka stared at the glowing toaster. He scratched absently at his bare chest, painfully aware that he had sticky spots where juice had splashed on him. Soul wondered how weird he would seem if he ran to his room for a shirt, and decided that given they were in their own apartment and the only person he would be hiding from would be Maka that the answer to that was 'very weird indeed.'

"What's your point?" Maka's fingers danced against the eject button on the toaster, but she didn't press it yet. The toaster was already dialed to her preferred doneness, but something twitchy in her never wanted to let it finish. This usually resulted in needing to toast it twice, and sometimes burning it.

"Something on your mind?"

He saw the muscles in Maka's shoulders shift under her thin robe and he knew she was thinking deeply. A restless mind ended up being a restless body for his best friend. Sighing, she popped the toast early, inspected it, and shoved it back down with a grunt.

"_No._" Came her emphatic reply which Soul knew to mean _yes, but I don't want to talk about it._

"Someday you need to buy something other than strawberry jam. You always get the cheap stuff that is like 1% strawberry. What are you, like ten?" Soul shifted the jam into her waiting grasp.

"It's cheap. At least I drink my juice from a glass like a civilized human being," she chided as she watched her toast like a hawk. Finally popping it and dancing the hot bread between her fingers, she said off handedly. "Hiro sent me an apology text. I've blocked him now, of course."

"Ah." Soul didn't know what else to say. He knew Maka wasn't the type to hold a grudge, exactly, she was more the type to lance someone from her life like a boil and ostensibly forget all about them.

Maka found the biggest, sharpest knife in the kitchen to spread her butter and jam on her toast and Soul physically willed himself not to back away slowly.

"He didn't bring up how I destroyed his stuff. Or all the things I sold. Or even those flyers I put up about him…"

"… when did you put up flyers…"

"He just said sorry for hurting me. And that he hadn't meant things to happen the way they did." She was gesturing with the knife into the air, and Soul continued to maintain a safe distance. "He was so decent about it all. Polite. Sorrowful." Her temper was rising, and Soul actually let out a breath he didn't know he was holding when she dropped the knife in the sink with a clatter. "He's trying to win the breakup, the bastard!"

Time to sweep in, Soul realized. "I don't think it's a competition."

"Everything is a competition, Soul."

"What about our friendship?" He asked simply, and watched with great satisfaction as all the wind left Maka's sails. This was not the first time he had pulled this move on her, and it worked as well this time as it had years ago when she was raging over a bad grade that threatened to drop her out of the running for valedictorian.

With a wry laugh, Maka picked up her toast plate. "That's so unfair. That you can just do that to me."

"Do what to you?" Soul, asked, playing as innocent as he dared.

She walked over to him and he dutifully opened the fridge so she could place the jam back in its spot on the door shelf. Lookup up at him, her huffed laughter caused goosebumps to raise on his peck. "You know what you do to me," The words were fond, touched with something else that he was afraid to name, but his body picked up on it and his eyes got wide as he realized his pajama pants would hide nothing from her shortly.

"Outta the way, Albarn, I need to take a wiz. We good here?" Without waiting for her response, Soul practically ran from the kitchen, his bare feet slapping against the linoleum. He almost tripped over Blair in the hallway, and he was so preoccupied with self loathing he didn't even hear Maka's no doubt sarcastic comeback.

***

Something was up with Soul and Maka knew it was her responsibility as his best friend to figure out what it was. She had gone over their interaction in the kitchen two nights ago over and over like it was a crime scene that needed to be solved. For some reason he had been avoiding her after that night and she was convinced it had something to do with those few moments they spoke. So preoccupied was Maka with the mystery of Soul's mood swing, she hadn't even punished him for drinking from (and thereby ruining in her estimation) the orange juice. She wasn't about drink his backwash.

Soul was out drinking with Black Star tonight, as Black Star celebrated his dominant win in his latest match. He may have been sporting a split lip, and some bruises in creative places, but nothing kept Star down for long. Maka hadn't been invited because this was some brofest testosterone packed trip to a strip club, which is why Maka was sitting in the living room with the TV on full blast as CSI marathoned. Soul hated strip clubs, and Black Star's MMA friends who spent the whole time talking about their protein intake and who would beat who in a fight, so Maka was doubly convinced that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that Soul had been replaced by a pod person.

Calling Liz had netted her nothing but a long screed about Liz's current issues with Kid and how he never seemed to find the time to really make her feel special these days. Maka hmmed and hawed until Liz lost steam, and then Maka had politely declined to come over for an impromptu makeover. She didn't feel like getting tarted up just so Liz could then drag her to a club and men could paw them both so Liz could bolster her own self esteem. Maka had had enough of men, the Platonic ideal, at the moment.

Tsubaki had listened but hadn't had anything helpful to add. Talking to Tsubaki was often like arguing with a mirror. She didn't usually have much to contribute, but she listened with the patience of a saint. Every now and then she had something profound to add, but this was not one of those times. Maka thanked her politely for being a good friend and letting her get things off her chest, but she was still at square one with her worry about Soul.

Typically the best person to bounce ideas off of was Soul himself and Maka realized with a sinking feeling that there had never been a time in her life where Soul was her problem. Soul was her rock. And she was deathly afraid that the reason he had gotten all weird on her was how, right before his ignominious retreat, she had basically thrown herself at him.

_You know what you do to me…_

She hadn't meant it to be so breathless, and in her mind she might as well have been stripping while climbing him like a pole at the same time. It was just that she had been so upset, and he had reminded her all at once that the only male on the planet she didn't think was a waste of space was standing in front of her. Shirtless. _Sympathetic._

Maka had been horrified when he brain said the thing she should be licking jam off of was Soul's chest, and careful pretense that this roommate situation was just another thing they could do as best friends was neatly disassembled by her hormones.

But then, Soul had always been the densest person on the face of the planet when it came to women so maybe it wasn't that issue at all. He was such a mess of inward directly anxiety and self-loathing that every attempt women had ever made to get his attention had been hopeless in school and beyond. Maka never worried about some girl swooping in and supplanting her or removing him from her orbit because it would be a miracle if he noticed being hit on. They would need all the subtlety of the strippers he was no doubt in the presence of at this very moment, and he was too skittish to respond well to someone that forward.

Looking down at her modest chest, practically flat at the angle she was slouched on the couch, Maka sighed. Something in her back tweaked, and she realized she had been in the same position for the last two episodes, and her muscles were all locked up. Time for a steamy bath and an early bedtime before she gave herself a tension headache.

"C'mon Blair," Maka shooed the cat off her lap. Stretching, hearing her back give several loud pops, Maka groaned. All this worry was wreaking havoc on her self-care. Damn Soul. Damn hormones. Damn Hiro for starting all this trouble by being a garbage human just like her Papa.

***

Soul had a sour stomach from all the cheap beer he had drank to keep from having to socialize with Black Star's friends. Star's invitation had been a good excuse to get out and not spend an evening cooped up with Maka. Last night he had dodged a bullet when she spent her whole Friday in her room on the phone with her girl friends, probably talking about Hiro again since he had had the nerve to poke the dragon. Soul had sunk down into sound editing one of his new compositions and before he knew it the apartment was dark and still and he had gone an entire evening without talking to his best friend.

It felt wrong. Not talking to Maka about what was bothering him was giving him hives, or at least that's what he assumed before he scratched at it and realized it was just body glitter. The only halfway decent thing that happened to him all night in that loud, neon hellhole was when one woman had come out in a school uniform that resembled the girl's uniform at the hgih school he and Maka had attended. He'd immediately thrown all his cash at her while Black Star slapped him on the back hard enough to wind him a bit. Star had meant to be encouraging and in his own macho way, he was trying to help Soul get over what was ailing his friend. But huge tits just weren't doing what they once did for him, and when a woman got really athletic on the pole Soul couldn't help but wonder if Maka could do it better.

He hoped to GOD he hadn't said that out loud, once the fourth pitcher of beer had made its appearance.

Well, he had finally reached his limit and no disparaging voice in the back of his mind speaking doomsday prophecies of the end of their friendship was going to preventing from coming clean tomorrow. Over the pounding techno beat, Soul had put together a plan that over the course of the night seemed to make more sense. He would sit Maka down and say, 'Maka, I know we've been friends since we were kids, but I've been in love with you for most of that, and while I thought living together would be great, I get blue balls every time a pair of your underwear static clings its way into my laundry.'

Less buzzed, he realized there may be some flaws there. It was a work in progress.

The point was that he was going to tell her that he had more than friendly feelings for her and see where the cards fell. It didn't have to mean the end of their friendship. When she inevitably smacked him upside the head and told him to snap out of it, he would finally be able to ground himself in rejection instead of float in the limbo of hope. Everything would be fine.

As he jiggled the handle on the bathroom, cursing how sticky it got sometimes, he fully didn't hear the beginning of the yelled OCCUPIED when he leaned his shoulder into it.

A cloud of steam escaped as Soul was greeted with the glorious sight of Maka, legs shining from the moisturizer she always put on after shaving them, holding a hand up that clutched a nail polish brush in pearlescent baby blue. She was clad in nothing was a towel, wet hair darker than her usually ash blond and eyes snapping.

"Soul!" Her shriek knocked the sobriety back into him, even if he still had to pee very badly. "What the HELL!"

"Sorry!" Soul backed out, grateful there had been nothing convenient for Maka to throw at him in that moment. This was going to make the whole love confession thing all the more complicated now that Maka wanted to grind his bones into powder, no doubt.

His spine stiffened as muffled words passed through the bathroom door. "I don't care how drunk you are, we are having words when I'm finished in here. Mark me, Soul Evans, you can't run from me! I'm faster than you!"

And she was too, damn it all. Even when he had a head start.

***

Maka's hair was still wet at the root, having just blasted it with the fastest drying she could stand before pulling on an old t-shirt and some pajama shorts. As she entered the kitchen she saw recognition flare in Soul's eyes, along with something that seemed a terrible lot like satisfaction, and she realized with an inward curse this was one of the band tees she had stolen from his laundry accidentally. It was so big she had mistook it for a sleeping shirt.

"We need to talk about boundaries, Soul," she crossed her arms and wandered over to where Soul was hunched over a glass of water at the kitchen table. It seemed like the tiny, two person table didn't have enough room to keep them apart and she decided not to sit yet and possibly knock knees with him.

"It was an accident," he mumbled, clearly still horrified. Maka found she was a little insulted he would be so cowed by seeing her in a towel. It wasn't like she was hideous.

Maka grabbed his nearly empty water glass in front of him with a growl and filled it up from the pitcher in the fridge before handing it back to him and taking up a station opposite him at the table, scooting back just a tad. His hooded eyes couldn't meet hers, but he glanced up as he took the water and mumbled thanks.

"Clearly it was an accident, that's not what I'm upset about." Not totally the truth, but she forged on. "I need you to tell me what's been going on with you."

The silence was deafening. Soul made a gurgling noise, then it seemed like his own vocal cords cut him off. Maka knew his anxiety paralyzed him sometimes, and she had seen this before when he was in college and his parents would call him to quiz him about what kind of progress he was making. It had happened then because he cared about their opinion so much and he felt like a waste of space, so it was all the more curious it was happening here and now.

"Ok, I'll go first. I'm so sorry." Maka ripped the words from her soul, sincerity in every syllable, hands folded in front of her.

"What?!" That startled him into acting more human, Soul looked like he was about to leap to his feet but instead kept pulling his hair back from his forehead.

"I think I said something to you a couple nights ago, I won't repeat it, and it made you feel like you need to distance yourself from me…"

Soul's eyes already looked bloodshot, but that could have been either a reaction to the various perfumes and colognes in the strip club or because she knew he had barely slept last night working on some project. "God Maka… no… everything is all fucked up…."

"I assure you I won't ever do anything to endanger what we have or change how we are now and you don't need to worry that—"

Sputtering, unable to form words to stop the apology spilling from Maka's mouth, Soul leapt up from his seat at last and crossed the kitchen to use one large hand to cover Maka's mouth before she could say anything else.

"How dare you silence me!" Maka said at him, at once transforming from contrite to enraged. The gall of him! Stamping down on his insole from her seated position, Soul backed up with a hop and a curse.

"I didn't, ow, mean it like that! I just… don't promise me we'll never change." He leaned on a counter so he could lift up the crushed foot and finally turn his bedraggled face towards her. "Maybe I want a change."

Maka wasn't entirely sure what he was implying, since he surely wouldn't look like a kicked puppy if their friendship were still rock solid. So she hazarded the worst case scenario, like ripping off a bandaid.

"We're still friends though, right?"

"Yes!" Soul had responded before she even finished the question.

"So what kind of change do you want?"

The question hung heavy and Maka watched Soul fidget and struggle with words some more. She had just wanted to get this over with so she could get a good night's sleep, being the kind of person who didn't do well with unresolved issues, but Soul seemed to be overwhelmed and there was going to be no progress at this rate. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole.

"Tomorrow you better be ready to talk. I just feel sorry for you because you had to spend a whole evening with Black Star." Maka said darkly, and she had stood and turned to go back to her room when arms circled her from behind. She fought and conquered her first instinct, which was to flip him over her hip and punch him in the throat, as that was just the years of self defense talking. Maka knew those arms, even if this embrace was a little different than other hugs they had shared.

It was his lips on her neck that shocked her, truly, as the warmth seemed to spread outwards from where he was softly kissing to encompass her whole body. His tongue flicked over a tendon, tense from earlier and no more relaxed now, before he pulled back to mumble into her ear. She could smell the sourness of the beer on his breath this close, but his words were sweet if indistinct.

".. love you, Maka."

She took a deep, deliberate breath. He pulled her closer and there was no missing the physical effect she apparently had on him. Unlike pretty much every other time she had had an erection pressed against her, she felt expectant. Maybe even a little but excited.

"No matter what the answer, it's ok." Soul said, just a hint of tremor in his voice.

Even If she hadn't known her own mind, Maka wondered as she turned around in his grasp and placed her hands gently against his jaw to pull him down for a kiss, would it have even occurred to her to say no? This was the boy she felt like she knew as well as she knew herself most days. If anything defined rightness in her world, it was Soul Evans.

He tasted like hell warmed over and he smelled like the scent section of a department store, but this was somehow perfect. Maka allowed herself something she never thought possible and trusted, leaning into the kiss and slipping her tongue into his mouth. Soul held her tightly, seemingly trying to also pull his hips back so the evidence of his desire didn't poke her so insistently. Smiling against him, Maka dropped her hands to his hips and firmly pulled him into her.

"Maka…" Soul groaned her name and Maka knew that wasn't the last time she was going to hear him moan her name tonight if she had a say. "I don't want to move this too fast and royally fuck it up."

"Soul," Maka said as she allowed him just enough distance to furtively try to shift himself. "Don't be scared."

He laughed, a short bark followed by a slow blink before he refocused on Maka's intent expression. "How come everyone assumes I'm going to run? I've been waiting for this chance for years."

Rooting out how many of their friends knew about Soul's feelings before Maka did was something she would devote herself to another day.

"Years, huh?" At Maka's arch tone Soul blushed a deep unflattering red. "Then I guess we've got some time to make up."

Soul looked hopeful, and she brushed a finger over his lips.

"But first you need to brush your teeth, ugh."

***

Upon seeing Soul and Maka sharing a furtive kiss outside the venue at the next group get together, money quietly changed hands in the background among their friends. Patty, as usual, cleaned up on 'first observed form of PDA' but Black Star surprised everyone by having guessed the correct amount of time it took them to get there as a couple.

"Anyone can see he's a sap for her," said Black Star with a shrug as he counted his winnings. "Always knew she'd have his balls in a vice someday."


End file.
